USE OF COLD FORMED STEEL AS REINFORCEMENT FOR EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON SEISMIC BEHAVIOUR OF VERNACULAR STRUCTURES

Structural Engineering

A vernacular structure is a type of local or regional construction that utilises traditional materials and resources from the area in which the building is located. The focus of this study is only on vernacular home structures built from adobe bricks. Because of its cost-effectiveness adobe buildings are likely to continue meeting the housing demands of rural people. Unfortunately, conventional adobe buildings are extremely vulnerable to earthquakes and significantly increase the loss of life and property. Such structure’s seismic failures are primarily caused by the brittleness and the absence of structural integrity. This study aimed to understand the effect of cold formed steel as reinforcement for the seismic behaviour of rural adobe houses. The main objective of the study is to observe the seismic behaviour of adobe structure reinforced with cold–formed thin–walled steel and damage or failure pattern of adobe structure under earthquake force. To attain this objective two series of tests were performed: A material testing programme for adobe material and Shake table testing programme for dynamic testing on reduced scale adobe house models. A comparative analysis between three different reduced scaled models were carried out in this study. After testing it is concluded that model A2 and A3 which are reinforced with cold formed steel strips shows better seismic performance than model A1 which is without any strengthening simple adobe model.

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